Kosovo/Kosova As Seen, As Told KOSOVO / KOSOVA As Seen, As Told PART III : The violation of human rights in Kosovo (Chapter 4) Contents Previous Next INTRODUCTION: THE VIOLATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS IN KOSOVO The violation of human rights was both cause and consequence of the conflict in Kosovo. Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, democracy and the rule of law as an essential component of security is a guiding principle of the OSCE. It was a principle flouted by the Yugoslav authorities. A consistent pattern of human rights violations in Kosovo led eventually to a breakdown in security. This in turn produced a human rights and humanitarian catastrophe, with violations on a massive scale. The chapters in this part of the report do not reach back across the past decade of human rights violations that produced the 1998-99 crisis, but are organized to present a thematic analysis of the human rights and humanitarian law violations in Kosovo as they were monitored and recorded by the OSCE-KVM. The range of themes covered is indicative of how extensive was Kosovo's human rights crisis within the time period of October 1998 to 9 June 1999, albeit many of the issues covered had been of growing concern for years. The treatment of each theme here gives an indication of its relative prevalence in the two phases of the OSCE-KVM reporting period. There were clear indications of both continuity and change in patterns of violations. In the standardized approach adopted by the OSCE-KVM human rights department to documenting and investigating human rights violations, some 30 categories of possible human rights violations had been identified. These included both civil and political rights as well as economic, social and cultural rights. Priority was given to complaints received from direct witnesses reporting human rights and humanitarian law violations; likewise, the assessment of information from refugees interviewed in Albania and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia gave priority to first-hand accounts. From within the data gathered by the OSCE-KVM, the themes to be presented for analysis here were in essence self-selecting, as the sheer volume of information collected by the Human Rights Division regarding certain human rights and humanitarian law violations significantly exceeded others. The gravity of certain violations, and their discernible impact on Kosovo communities and society, were also http://www.osce.org/kosovo/documents/reports/hr/part1/ch4.htm (1 of 2)12/5/2003 11:50:40 AM